[kungito]

You could say Hikaru single handedly popularised chess because he's a GM who started memeing on twitch.tv. There are other streamers who are also big, and some youtubers, but I'd say the fact that he's so highly ranked was required for success. Then Pogchamps tournament happened and chess exploded.

[hobofan]

While Hikaru and other Twitch streamers/content creators are definitely a part of the puzzle, I'd say that this comparison of search trends[0] indicate that the more likely kick-off event was Queen's Gambit, which reached a lot of people that are not that into Twitch.

[0]: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

[yazfield]

interesting to compare hikaru to magnus search trends https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

[noir_lord]

You could say it, it wouldn't be true (or not the whole truth anyway).